Schools stress over ISAT, hope students don't

That feeling that third- through eighth-grade students and parents are experiencing is ISAT-itis -- a tension that develops as the Illinois Standards Achievement Test disrupts their daily routines.

School schedules are thrown out the window. Parents are asked not to schedule doctor appointments during the school day, to cancel vacations, to make sure their kids are fed a healthy breakfast and arrive at school on time.

But if families feel a little stress during the annual testing window, consider the plight of the school administrator or teacher who must pull off a minor miracle of organization to adhere to the rigid set of rules that govern the process.

Each bar-coded booklet must be guarded before the tests and accounted for afterward so the questions aren't compromised. Schools have to provide a written statement to explain why even a single booklet is missing.

Each student must be given the right materials for the right subject. Something as seemingly simple as scratch paper has to follow specifications (blank and unlined, collected and destroyed after each test session) to make sure the test is truly standardized.

Illinois third- through eighth-graders are in the middle of a testing window that began this week and will run through mid-March.

Sharon Aspinall, the principal at Highland Middle School in Libertyville District 70, personally labels and counts 1,500 test booklets.

"A lot of people pawn that task off on social workers," said Aspinall, who even signed for the 33 boxes when they arrived and locked them in the conference room next to her office. Not her.

"No one touches them," she said. "I don't want anyone in the room unless I am. If I'm the one that's responsible, I have to make sure they are safe."

The test provides a snapshot of how kids are performing relative to statewide standards. It's not tied to individual success, because children have already advanced to the next grade by the time scores are returned. But schools are graded, and can be sanctioned, based on ISAT results.

The stakes are high in West Chicago Elementary School District 33, where five of seven schools have not met the federal standard of "adequate yearly progress." If schools fail to reach it again the district will have to provide services such as privately run after-school tutoring.